


in your head

by shadowdance



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Dreams, Pre-Canon, it literally takes place right before link wakes up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-19 20:02:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15517527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowdance/pseuds/shadowdance
Summary: ("Link, wake up.")Link sees the ghosts caught between dreams and reality.





	in your head

i.

 

When Link opens his eyes, he feels fingers stroking his temples, and a blur of red and white appears before him. He blinks, and Mipha comes into focus. Her usual sad smile is gone, replaced by the look of someone grieving. She looks sad, and Link wants to reach up and push away that sadness, grasp her hand and squeeze it. But his arms feel heavy, his whole body sore, and Mipha still gazes at him like she knows something he doesn’t.

“You’re awake,” she says. Sadness weighs heavy on her tongue. “Here, at least.”

“Mipha,” Link whispers, because that’s all he can manage. The weight of her name exhausts him—he shudders, body going slack. Mipha brushes his face gingerly.

“Don’t talk, okay? You have to save your energy.”

The thing about Mipha is, she understands him better without his words. She knows what each facial expression means, how to read the mood in his eyes. She must see franticness reflected there, because she leans down.

“We’re on Vah Ruta,” she says, and suddenly Link becomes aware of the creaking machine, the sound of water sloshing and pouring in the beast. Something shrieks in the animal, something of a rasping beast.

 _Link, wake up_. The words are faint, and he strains to catches the syllables; he can’t even make out who’s saying it. He doesn’t even think Mipha heard it, but he sees the way her face contorts, panic and sadness caught in her gaze.

“You have to go,” she says. The touch of her fingertips are feather-light against his skin. “I wish you could stay here with me, but you have a job to do.”

Exhaustion aches in every soft spot in Link’s body. He almost groans, but Mipha suddenly grips his temples with so much force that a headache erupts.

“Link,” she says, and her voice sounds strange—is she getting farther? But he can still feel the pressure of her hands, deep against his skull. “Link—I won’t be there to heal you so please—”

Vah Ruta shrieks, a somber sound erupting from the trunk. It sounds warbled with water, and Link feels it in his own lungs, rising up, struggling to breathe. Mipha’s face wavers in and out, but her grip remains firm.

“I cannot heal you,” Mipha repeats; a sob works up in her throat. “So please, promise me, Link, _promise—_ ”

Her voice is fading away, and so is the pressure on his temples. Link tries to grasp at anything, but all he sees is white, Mipha’s last words floating towards him.

“Be careful, Link, do you promise? You must be careful.”

 

ii.

 

Scorching heat, cracking his lips and making his throat raw—Link gasps, stumbling backwards. He feels as if his skin is melting, as if the heat is forcing its way in his veins.

A Goron— _Daruk, how could you forget him?_ —sits across from him, shoulders hunched. His usual jovial expression is missing, and something that looks like bitter defeat is on his face. His eyes brighten when he sees Link, and then darken.

“Little guy! You’re here! Wait a minute, that’s not boding well. If _you’re_ here and _I’m_ here and _I’m_ …well, dead—”

Link blanches. It feels as if his heart is tumbling out of his chest, shattering to the floor. Daruk’s eyes widen.

“Oh—you don’t know? No, you must know…I don’t think you’re dead, little guy. Which is great! You can give ‘ol Ganon a punch for me. But why are you here?”

Link shrugs. Daruk squints, his brain probably going a million miles per hour, before something dawns on him.

“ _Oh_. Little guy, you aren’t actually here, you know that? I dunno how long you’re gonna be here for, but you aren’t actually here.”

Somehow Link is not surprised. Still, he can feel the heat nearly overwhelm him, searing under his skin. He wipes his forehead, and suddenly he feels Vah Rudania twist under their feet. The ground underneath the beast begins to shake, and Daruk curses.

“Little guy, the mountain’s gonna erupt in a second. Let me tell you one thing—you’ve got to do what we didn’t.”

Link’s knees are knocking together, and he hears Vah Rudania creak. He looks around, and to his astonishment, he sees slime dripping from the ceiling, slime oozing on the ground, slime guarding every door on the beast.

“You gotta save us, little guy,” Daruk says, right as the volcano erupts. Link looks at him, and sees sadness on Daruk’s face. It looks so unfitting that Link wants to yell at him to stop. “You gotta save all of us.”

 _Link, wake up._ Those words float into his ears again, barely a wisp of a breath. Link shakes his head, and that’s when Rudania hisses, mounds of magma rocks hurtling up, up, up, and then coming back down.

Daruk opens his mouth, but Link doesn’t hear him—all he hears is the whistle of a magma rock hurtling downwards. He turns away so he can’t see the impact.

Heat explodes across his face and then—silence.

 

iii.

 

Urbosa saunters up and down Vah Naboris, acting as if she still owns the place. Link takes care to notice the slime—crawling at the top of the beast, sticking up in little towers. Urbosa curses.

“Link, whenever you get here, you must get rid of this for me,” she says, flinging her arm out towards the beast. Link can feel the footsteps underneath—thud. Thud. Thud. He hears thunder crackle with every step, his heart thrumming to the beat.

Urbosa saunters up to him and crouches to his height. “You have to save Zelda,” she says. “I’m sure that’s what Daruk told you. And Mipha.”

It takes more than a few seconds for Link to match names to faces, and it terrifies him. Urbosa clucks her tongue.

“I don’t know if you’ll remember this,” she says, and turns away. “Nobody really remembers dreams, and you’re on the road to losing your memory.”

Her posture is tall, regal, that of a proud chieftain. Link catches a drag in her shoulders, though, the way they sink like the dunes of the desert.

“But when you save Zelda,” Urbosa says, and her hair whips to the side. “Tell her it’s not her fault, all right? Because I know her, and I know what she must be thinking. You know that, too.”

 _Link, wake up_. He breathes in and tries to put the words with a name—it _has_ to be Zelda, because the lines around Urbosa’s face suddenly become more prominent. It’s clear she heard it, too, and the look on her face makes Link want to cry. He wants to reach out, touch her arm, but his body feels like lead again. He feels tired.

“You’re leaving soon,” Urbosa says. “She always likes to give a warning.” She crouches in front of him. “But be careful, okay?”

Link stares back, defiant. He feels sand gather in the corner of his eyes, stinging, but he doesn’t want to close his eyes. He’s not sure when he’s going to open them again, and he wants to capture Urbosa to memory—her tall stance, her mouth pursed in a thin line, her eyes glowing with the need for revenge already. An unforgettable warrior, yet those details already slip through his mind like fine grains of sand.

“It’s not your fault,” Urbosa says. Her voice already sounds distant, like sand muffles the words on her tongue. “You need to know that, too. It’s not your fault.”

The sand is painful in Link’s eyes, making him tear up. He shuts his eyes against the sandstorm.

 

iv.

 

He’s too high up. Link gulps and staggers away from the edge—he doesn’t have a fear of heights, but he can’t see the bottom. It’s nothing but fog, and that’s scary to him.

“Ah. You’re here.”

Link looks up. He sees a bird with dark blue feathers, a bow strapped to his back, a scarf wavering in the wind. He feels as if he should associate the bird with something, but nothing comes to mind.

“You’re…forgetting me?” the bird asks, and Link remembers: Revali. But only the name, nothing else. Revali sounds almost stunned and Link gets the feeling it’s not something he usually is.

“You promised you wouldn’t,” Revali says, and his eyes go dark. He shakes his head. “Ugh. I can’t blame you, though. You’re losing focus.”  
  
Link feels bewildered. He swallows and tries to find his words, but all that comes out is, “Am I dead?” The moment those words leave his mouth, he slumps his shoulders.

Revali’s eyes almost bulge out of his head. “Oh, you _can_ talk! How come you never did during your lifetime?”

Link feels panic again, rising up in his chest. Revali rolls his eyes and strides forward. He’s not much taller than Link, admittedly—barely a few inches.

“No,” Revali says. He tilts his head towards the sky. “I’d like to humor you, but I don’t know how much time I’ve got. So, you’re not dead, but you almost died? Something like that. And we’re all dead. Which means the fate of Hyrule rests on _your_ puny shoulders.”

Link feels something heave in his stomach. He thinks he might be sick, and he staggers backwards, close to the edge. Revali sighs. Some feathers stick up on his wings and Link focuses on that—when was the last time Revali was ruffled? There’s something about Revali that’s urgent now, something that makes his feathers stick up. It’s slightly unnerving.

 _Link, wake up_. The words are the loudest as they have ever been—they slice through Link’s brain, and he grabs his head. Revali looks at the sky with disdain.

“That princess. She could never take her time. Are you glad I told him, at least?” His voice rises into a yell. “He’s gonna forget us anyways! He’s not going to have a clue of who he is!”

The world swoops over and under Link’s feet, and he feels like he’s tumbling out of control. He gasps, and Revali looks at him. Instantly, all the frustration seeps out of his face, replaced with something wise. It looks totally out-of-place on him.

“Fall,” Revali says, but there’s no malice in his tone. “You’ve got to, Link.”

Link looks at him. Revali tips his head towards the ground. “You’ll be back here. But I don’t like to be kept waiting. Hurry up and fall.”

Link’s mouth is forming the shape of _no_ when he feels weightless, and suddenly there’s the sensation of falling, falling, falling, with nobody to catch him.

 

v.

 

Something yellow dances in his sight, prancing around the darkness. Link watches it, entranced, and he can’t tell if it’s the flick of long, blonde hair, or just the natural light. He decides it’s the light, but he _knows_ he’s seen a flicker of blonde hair somewhere—maybe his own, or maybe swinging in front of him. He can’t remember.

The light grows brighter, pushing the darkness away. Link reaches out to catch it.

“Wake up, Link.”

He opens his eyes.


End file.
